Along each of our paths, while travelling our own separate journeys, many of us come into contact and make acquaintances with tiresome, tedious or just plain unsavory characters. Having been on the road for eight long years, now that I am finally home, I want to rest. Well, rest as far as life will let me. It is no picnic being a care provider, and although my mom is still quite self-sufficient, she still requires a lot of time and effort to keep her smiling and satisfied. At the ripe old age of 74, it doesn't take much to tire her out or make her body ache. Consequently, I (and some of the others in her life) find a lot of chore work to be done. Well, some of us anyway. In this little blog saga about my mom and our family, there are many characters. One of my brothers is definitely a character. He is ten years older than me and is quite exacerbating. He is a functioning alcoholic. He manages to drink a twelve pack of beer a day and sometimes more. Rain or shine, hell or high water, store bought beer or homemade wine; he is going to get drunk EVERYDAY. I knew this about him when I first started to get to know him two years ago. I mean I know him, he is my brother; but I didn't KNOW him. Now that he is sharing my house (and more accurately my mother's house as mine is in the process of modification), I am really getting to see how he is. He tends to get pretty drunk and after he is ten beers in or so, we have conversations. I am sure that he doesn't remember the bulk of these conversations, but I do. So the other week, we were having one of these conversations and he admitted that he intends to do as little as possible. I mean he looked right at me through those blood shot little weaselly eyes and professed that he has every intention of not doing a damn thing to help with any chore other than drinking his alcohol or getting fucked up. And he did it with sincerity. I asked him if he thought it was fair that I did all the work to get my house in order and then he was going to come right in and plop his drunk ass down and continue living the good life on my coat tails. He didn't have any problem with that at all. Does the story of the ant and the grasshopper come to mind?? It does to me. At fifty years old, he has nothing.....no house, no savings and no inner drive to better his current life or make arrangements for the future. It saddens me to see him waste his talents, because I know he is smart and he can write better than I can. I rue the day that he frustrates me so bad that I toss his ass out, because he isn't a spring chicken and the choices in his life are starting to take their toll and picking up speed along the way. I love my brother, but he really pisses me off sometimes!
7 comments:
I feel for you... and I give you credit. I'd have a hard time.
That picture makes me sad :(
It is such a difficult position to be in. I wonder how you cope.
It shouldn't! My daughter and I were having fun with him (with him?? at his expense??). I talk to him all the time and I just think it is rediculous that he does this and expects nothing ill to come of it. He is lucky that he still has both eyebrows!
JCN, some how I will manage. He is a grown man and can do what he wants.....but so am I and so can I. I am hoping I can get him on camera and make $10K from the film, I'll at least split it with him.
Hey Stewey! Old Bon Qui Qui is gonna email you!
Stu -
Man, that's a hard place in which to be. You're tougher than me!
It's so hard to deal with family sometimes. My family is okay, but when I was married, my mother-in-law lived with us for awhile (alcoholic) and my brother-in-law also lived with us for quite awhile (alcoholic and drug addict and in and out of jail). I didn't deal with them very well. It wasn't a good time in my life.
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